Combat Roles
by probablylostrightnow
Summary: After the Reaper War, Jack visits her students' graves.


From a distance, the graves all looked identical – row after row of uniform gray stone blocks, stretching away into the fog. You had to get pretty close to see any distinction – the different names precision-carved into each stone by geth lasers, the pictures and flowers that had been left next to some of the stones by grieving relatives or friends. A grim number of stones sat unadorned. Either no one who knew them had made the journey to this mass grave site yet, or, more likely, none of them had survived either.

 _Enough to make some poet wax eloquent about the cost of war. Fuck that_ , Jack thought.

Her first time here, she'd had to search among the gravestones to find her kids. By now, she didn't even need to think to find them, just let her feet walk their course. She stopped when she reached Danielle Ayittey's grave and let her eyes drift over the remaining names. Lin, Rotari, Prangley, Chakman…

Jack had watched them go down, one by one. Screamed at the Reapers in fury, then screamed at her students in desperation. They'd heard far too much about how important this battle was, and it had made them far too ready to sacrifice themselves. Prangley, the fucking fool, had taken a shot for her that her barriers could have handled. Probably.

"Fucking waste," she muttered to herself, then scowled.

Everyone seemed to be talking to themselves a lot recently. The big brains in the labs thought it might have something to do with, well, whatever the fuck Shepard had done up there, that had made the Reapers their allies instead of destroying them.

"Destroy the Reapers." Trust Shepard to take a mission objective that simple and find a way to fuck it up.

Plenty of people thought the Crucible had misfired, or been a trick all along – that Shepard had meant to destroy the Reapers, but it didn't work. Jack didn't buy it. This clusterfuck had Shepard's fingerprints all over it.

"So the Reapers are our friends now," she said sourly. "Just like everyone else who tried to kill us – fucking geth, fucking batarian terrorists… Everyone has to be _friends_ now, because the fucking Queen of all the Girl Scouts said so."

 _Gotta bring everyone together_. _Gotta save everybody_. _Except my kids. Those you put on the front line_.

It would sure be satisfying to tell Shepard what she thought of that, but she was a smear of DNA up somewhere in Earth orbit, and that hurt like fucking hell too.

"Are you mad at Shepard, or yourself?"

She clenched a fist in frustration – _damn_ this talking to herself – then made herself release it. Biotically wrecking the graveyard might be satisfying, but she would feel like fucking _shit_ about it later.

Stupid question to ask herself, though. She had more than enough pissed off to go around. Shepard might have suggested putting the little shits on the front lines, but after her initial doubts, Jack had gone along happily enough. So delighted, so flushed with their success, she hadn't seen where it was going to end up.

Shit, someone was coming, a woman holding a bouquet of flowers. Jack watched her warily. She really did not need to run into Ma Prangley or Rotari's sister right now. Some of the families had gotten in touch with her, the ones that had survived. A few blamed Jack for their kids' death. Fair enough, she could deal with that. It was the ones who _thanked_ her that really got under her skin. Like she'd done the brats a fucking favor by getting them killed.

The woman stopped on the other side of the graveyard, laying her flowers atop one of the graves there. Jack turned back to Ayittey's grave. "I am fucking sick," she said dourly, "of being the only one to walk away from a bunch of dead kids."

Yeah, she'd been the only one. Aresh didn't count – he'd never been able to walk away, really. And Rodriguez didn't count, either – she sure as hell hadn't been able to walk when Jack had pulled her off the battlefield. She'd thought she was saving at least one – but now the docs weren't sure if she'd ever wake up. Fucking hooray.

But Jack couldn't seem to leave her, even now that their new Reaper friends had gotten the mass relays up and running again. So she was stuck on Earth, which had turned out to be just another piece of shit dirtball. Visiting graves, because she was going to fucking lose her mind if she spent all her time sitting by a hospital bed. Not that she was doing much better here, talking to herself, talking to her dead students, and with this horrible ripped up inside feeling all the time.

She was so tired of feeling this shit. Maybe it was time to get back out in the galaxy, find some asses to kick. There had to be some Blue Suns left out there that she could smear against the wall.

Or they could shove her back in cryo. Jack was pretty sure she hadn't felt anything there.

"Dump the fucking self-pity," she told herself.

Her omni-tool pinged. She gave it a puzzled look. She'd turned off the alerts for any messages that weren't marked urgent. At this point there were probably a hundred emails from Grissom Academy sitting there unanswered. A bunch from Sanders, offering condolences, then asking her to come back – the damage was light, they'd be up and running again soon, there'd be new students to train. Some from the other teachers, hinting that Sanders herself could use some help, that she was having trouble functioning through her grief.

Who the hell wasn't, in this fucking galaxy?

She shrugged and pulled up her email. The note was terse, just five words.

 _Rodriguez awake. Asking for you_.

She swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat. Well, at least this was fucking _something_ , wasn't it?

"I'll look after her. I promise," she said to the graves, and turned to go.


End file.
